


There's A Way About Him

by TWDObsessive



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Falling In Love, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 21:02:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20954855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TWDObsessive/pseuds/TWDObsessive
Summary: To say it was love at first sight would sound cliche.  To call him my soulmate would seem trite and insincere.  As an old friend once said, words can be meager things.  Sometimes they fall short.  Daryl was nothing more or less than Daryl.  And that’s what I loved about him.





	There's A Way About Him

**Author's Note:**

> Totally unbeta'd one-shot. Got a little inspiration from seeing Daryl on screen again. Please forgive any errors/typos!

He was a swirl of wild fury and misplaced hatred -- narrowed eyes, hunched shoulders and an evident age-old self-loathing that caged him like a tiger. It was clear he was used to being hurt. He anticipated it, expected it. He snarled and circled like a wounded animal but I saw through the bluster and the noise and I wanted to hold him and show him what the world could be like if only he’d let it. 

Unfortunately the world was shit. Society had collapsed, the dead were walking and the worst was coming out in mankind. But to a man like Daryl Dixon… hell, he’d probably had worse days. 

There was something about his guarded vulnerability that made me want to care for him even though it was clear he wasn’t the sort of man that would accept the kindness. He wore suspicion like a second layer of skin and for trust to penetrate that shield it would take time and dedication and patience.

To say it was love at first sight would sound cliche. To call him my soulmate would seem trite and insincere. As an old friend once said, words can be meager things. Sometimes they fall short. Daryl was nothing more or less than Daryl. And that’s what I loved about him.

I watched him a lot over the years. Watched as he looked desperately for Sophia. Watched as he let down his armor and started letting people in, especially me. I watched as he became a leader by my side. Watched him put others above himself time and again. He was a broken, abused child who bloomed into a man with a huge heart and an ability to care deeply for those around him.

And I knew he loved me. I think everyone knew. Everyone but him.

When he first started trusting me, I held onto it like it was fine china. I never gave him reason to question my motives or to fear my intentions. I always used caution with him, used my eyes more than my words to express myself and he was thankful for that gift of silence between us. He preferred to speak wordless, it was less of a risk.

He started to regard me with eyes that were filled more with interest than caution, more want than worry. I could see his confusion. He couldn’t understand why someone would want his friendship the way I did. He couldn’t understand his draw to me. His inner battle must have been bloody and merciless — trying to understand what love was, trying to recognize this thing he had no experience with.

I loved him. Loved him since he dropped to the ground after Andrea shot him, the thought of losing him giving me clarity. He’s broken my heart a thousand times because when he hurts, I hurt. He lives with life’s accumulated pain like jagged shards of broken glass stabbing at his flesh. He feels he deserves nothing. He’s unaware of his worth. 

When I’ve touched him, a gentle hand against the small of his back or the brush of my arm against his, he trembles. It’s nearly imperceptible but it’s there and I want to see him shudder from the warmth of me pressed tight against him in an embrace that can’t be mistaken for anything other than love.

Once the Saviors were defeated and Negan was in jail, the rush of constant chaos dulled. There was time to think, time to wonder, time to want. And I wanted him. And I knew he wanted me. What was I waiting for?

It was late afternoon when I found him gutting a couple rabbits in the makeshift butcher shop we’d created in a neighboring garage. 

“Hey,” he said with a nod as I walked up the driveway. 

“Hey.”

He had on a sleeveless Tee and baggy pants, his usual attire. He was filthy, covered in dirt and grime and it stuck to the muscles of his tanned arms like a permanent tattoo. His long hair was plastered against his sweaty forehead and he had the shadows of a bruise along his right cheek from where Judith had accidentally hit him with one of the blocks from her toy chest. His worn out pants were held tight with tied off rags and his hands were covered in blood and guts from the rabbits he worked on. In a word, he was gorgeous. He was Daryl. 

“What’s up?”

“Thought we could walk,” I suggested with a shrug. I had no plan any further than putting one foot in front of the other. But my goal was to help him understand what this thing was between us. It was time.

“Kay,” he answered as I knew he would. “Everything alright?”

“Can’t I just want to chat with my best friend without having an emergency?”

He looked at me with that half-smile that only I could coax out of him. “You got somethin’ on your mind. I can tell,” he said.

I shrugged and kicked at some rocks underfoot as we walked towards the Alexandria wall. We walked in silence for a while, something I have only ever been able to do with him. The kind of quiet we have between us is like a down blanket -- comforting, warm.

“Judith’s cuttin’ a tooth,” he finally said. I’m not sure what it says about me that he’d noticed it before I did.

“Guess that’s why all the crying lately,” I said.

“Rick?”

“Yeah?”

“Why we out here?”

I pushed against the panel of wall we were walking by. “Just thought we should do a perimeter check. Can’t be too careful.”

“You had Gabe and Eugene do this two days ago, man.”

Damn Daryl and his iron-clad memory. I leaned against the wall and looked up at the bright blue sky above us. Sometimes it looked so strange, the sky flawless while everything underneath it was falling apart. “You ever miss the days out on the road?” I asked.

“Pfft. You kiddin’ me? All the damn time. You know I hate these fuckin’ walls, man,” he said as he leaned against the wall beside me and followed my gaze to the sky above.

“Yet here you stay,” I said looking back down to meet his eyes.

“Here I stay,” he repeated. “For Carl and Judith.”

I nodded. “For me?”

Daryl looked away knowing I’d be able to see the truth in his eyes. We could read each other and frankly, it was a surprise that he didn’t already know I was in love with him. Maybe he did know. Maybe he just didn’t know what to do with it.

“For everyone, man,” he said as he scanned the backs of the houses. I let the silence hang for a while again, giving him that comfort.

“You know when Judith’s getting a tooth,” I said. “You know when Eugene is about to come up with a stupid idea. You know when there’s a deer on the other side of these walls without even seeing it. You know when it’s gonna rain and when Carol needs a pep talk. How can you know all these things and not know...that I’m in love with you?”

I watched him for his reaction and he slowly looked towards me, those blue eyes of his questioning what he just heard, thought lines in his forehead and a squint from the sun. “Eugene’s always coming up with stupid ideas. That ain’t hard to know.”

“Daryl, why are you always avoiding what’s between us? I’m sick of dancing around it. You’ve got to be too. It’s been years. Years.”

I watched as he put a thumbnail in his mouth to buy himself some time before he answered. The sun shimmered in his hair and the way his body bowed as he leaned against the wall was something I wanted to paint. There’s a way about him, where he looks so fallen apart but in reality he is so put together. Strong shoulders, knowing eyes, undying loyalty, and a love he didn’t even know he was capable of.

“I don’t know what you want me to say to that,” he finally muttered.

“Want you to say you feel the same way. I know you do, Daryl. I can read you like poetry.”

“Fine. You want me to say it?” Daryl said angrily as he bounced off the wall and started pacing in front of me. “I love you. There. You happy now?”

“Why are you so angry about that?”

“Because what am I supposed to do with that? I don’t...I don’t fucking know how to...like fucking be in love. Look at me, Rick. Do I look like someone who’s got a clue how to...do this?”

I couldn’t help but smile at his naivety and innocence. “There’s nothing you got to do,” I said as I reached out for his hand. He hesitated but finally reached out to hold mine, his eyes steady on our intertwined fingers. I gently tugged him closer and wrapped my arms around him, hugging him like I hadn’t done since the day he escaped the sanctuary. It felt so nice to feel the warmth of his body against mine, to feel his arms nervously wrap behind my back and squeeze. I put a hand against the back of his head so I could cradle it in the crook of my neck and I brushed a kiss against his jawline. 

“Relax,” I whispered. “It’s just me.” And after a few moments I could feel his muscles relax into the embrace, the tension in his shoulders fall away until he was like putty against me. I stroked his back and started to pepper kisses along his jaw until I had him facing me, his mouth just inches from mine.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he whispered. It was so soft it was more air than words.

I closed my eyes and pressed my lips to his, slotting them together when he gasped at the kiss. And he was trembling in my hands, shivering from the excitement of my touch, of my mouth on his. He wasn’t pulling away like I’d worried. 

“See, it’s easy,” I whispered against his lips before I pressed against them again for more. He tasted like tree bark and cherries and I couldn’t get enough of it.

When we eventually parted he kept his eyes on the ground like the answer to all his questions were down there. I lifted his chin up to get his eye contact. “If you hated it, I won’t do it again,” I said softly.

His gaze dropped to my lips and after a whisper of a moment he crashed his lips into mine, pushing me back against the wall, his hands in my hair to hold me steady while he devoured me. It was heaven. It was flawless perfection like the blue sky above us and my heart fluttered like the frantic wings of a hummingbird. 

His hands moved down my body as if he was reading me like braille, fingers studying every dip and swell of me and I could feel the hardness in his jeans as his body crushed against mine. I was just as hard and dropped my hands to his waist as I desperately tried to rut up against him, to feel that friction. Little whines and moans fell from his lips as our writhing increased and the sound of it was so intimate, so _mine_. Those sounds were for me and no one else. 

Finally with one of my legs wrapped around one of his, we both gasped from orgasm, my head flying backwards and cracking against the wall behind me as we rode it out.

Once we got our breathing under control I grabbed my head and slid to the ground to the sound of Daryl’s stifled laugh. 

“See, I done told you someone would get hurt.”

“Worth it,” I said as he squatted down in front of me.

“So fine. We’re in love now, okay? I gotta get back. Them squirrels ain’t gonna skin themselves.”

“So that’s all you have to say about this?” I asked as he lifted me to my feet.

He thought for a moment. “I ain’t sleeping on the couch no more so move your shit off the side of your bed.”

“You are way more romantic than I imagined,” I said with a laugh.

“Sorry, I know that don’t beat your ‘read you like poetry’ shit,” he said with a snort of laughter. 

“You making fun of me?” I asked still rubbing the back of my head.

He looked me up and down. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

And it was that easy. After all those years of wanting, I finally got something out of this damn apocalypse worth having. And I’d never, ever let it go.

**Author's Note:**

> I miss these boys together. And I'm still hoping Daryl ends up in Rick's movies.


End file.
